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Election Problem Log - 2004 to 2009
Check out our other problem logs!
VotersUnite! began this problem log with the November 2004 election. It continued its compilation of problems reported in the media by adding news stories about subsequent elections, through 2009. See also: Failures by vendor and Failures by state.
Sort Order:               
Date Problem Type State
Vendor
Description
10/26/2004 Ballot printing NY Monroe County. An Albany judge ruled that the Independence Party's nomination of two state Supreme Court candidates should be disallowed because of problems at the nominating convention. Absentee ballots are incorrect and voting machines must have the candidates changed. Story Archive
10/10/2008 Ballot printing NY Renssalaer County. Paper ballots were printed with the name of the Democratic candidate for president as "Osama" rather than "Obama". Story
10/20/2009 Fraud NY Rensselaer County. "Thirty-eight forged or fraudulent ballots have been thrown out, according to records at the Rensselaer County Board of Elections in Troy, N.Y. Enough votes, an election official admits, to likely have tipped the November election to the Democrats." Story Archive
11/2/2004 Machine malfunction NY Late openings, broken down machines and insufficient or inadequately trained staff at some locations. Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn. Story Archive
11/2/2004 Machine malfunction NY More broken machines in NYC. Story Archive
11/4/2008 Machine malfunction NY Sequoia Tompkins County. One of the ballot marking machines intended for voters with disabilities froze up during the instruction phase and could not be used. Story Archive
11/10/2008 Machine malfunction NY Sequoia Essex County. County commissioner complains of the unreliability, printer problems, and 180 identified defects in the Image Cast scanners. Story Archive
9/15/2009 Machine malfunction NY Sequoia Broome County. During the "pilot" using uncertified equipment, Sequoia/Dominion ImageCast ballot marking devices/optical scanners malfunctioned in several precincts. At Seton Catholic High School, the machine was out of operation for an hour with memory card problems. At Davis College in Johnson City, the machine didn't start up properly. "Just turn it on and it will do it's things, well it didn't do it's thing." said Broome County Election Inspection Chair David Aswad. Story Archive
9/16/2009 Machine malfunction NY ESS Albany County. During the "pilot" using uncertified equipment, ES&S DS-200 optical scanners jammed. It turned out to involve a glitch in the machine's software that was supposed to have been fixed already by the state and the machine's manufacturer. Story Archive
9/16/2009 Machine malfunction NY Sequoia Washington County. Sequoia/Dominion optical scanner jammed and delayed the posting of results. "They couldn’t get the paper out," Board of Elections Commissioner Donna English said of the machine malfunction. "That happens a lot of the time. The custodian got there and got it straightened out." Story Archive
11/3/2009 Machine malfunction NY Sequoia Oneida County. At the Vernon polling place, none of the three ImageCast optical scanners would operate. Story Archive
11/3/2009 Machine malfunction NY Sequoia Broome County. ImageCast ballot scanners sensed defects in the paper and rejected valid ballots. "And so because it picks up the defects, it doesn't pick up what people are voting for, and we have to void it and give them another paper," said Sweeney. Story Archive
11/3/2009 Machine malfunction NY ESS Erie County. Three DS200 ballot scanners jammed and had to be replaced. Story Archive
11/3/2009 Machine malfunction NY Sequoia St. Lawrence County. ImageCast ballot scanner malfunctions prevented the county from having election results by the end of election day. Story Archive
11/4/2009 Machine malfunction NY Sequoia Cayuga County. ImageCast ballot scanners crashed. Some rejected valid ballots that other machines accepted. Story Archive
11/4/2009 Machine malfunction NY Sequoia Fulton County. ImageCast ballot scanners were impounded after it was found they were not working properly. Story Archive
11/4/2009 Machine malfunction NY Sequoia Lewis County. ImageCast ballot scanners malfunctioned at two polling stations. Story Archive
11/4/2009 Machine malfunction NY Sequoia Steuben County. The ImageCast ballot scanner in the first ward malfunctioned. Totals may not be known for weeks. Story Archive
11/10/2009 Machine malfunction NY Sequoia Broome County. Hand counts revealed the ImageCast ballot scanners in five voting districts had miscounted votes. In some cases, the machines had rejected valid ballots. Story Archive Story2 Archive2
11/12/2009 Machine malfunction NY ESS Erie County. A ballot programming error on the ballot scanner caused votes to be counted incorrectly. Story Transcript, see page 14.
11/13/2009 Machine malfunction NY Sequoia Lewis, Seneca and Schuyler Counties. The ImageCast ballot scanners failed. According to Anna E. Svizzero, state elections operation director, the primary cause of voting machine failure was a memory issue related to the way ballots were programmed to record multiple votes for one office. Story Archive

Update Nov. 20, 2009. "The issue was a bug in the Dominion source code that caused the machine to hang while creating ballot images for certain vote combinations in multiple candidate elections." The bug was discovered during pre-election testing, and ballot configuration files were modified in some machines, freeing up enough memory to prevent the hang. But not all machines with the problem were identified, so the malfunction occurred on election day in those machines. Story

11/25/2009 Machine malfunction NY Sequoia St. Lawrence County. Phantom votes (more votes than voters) reported in six election districts in the NY-23 congressional contest. Story Archive
11/27/2009 Machine malfunction NY Sequoia St Lawrence County. ImageCast ballot scanners broke down in eight election districts. A comparison of details from the election suggests that the machines miscounted votes in others -- adding votes in some, missing votes in others. Story Archive
11/12/2004 Malfeasance NY Yonkers. State Senate recount shows that nearly every lever machine had a higher count for Democrat Stewart-Cousins than was recorded from the precinct count. A judge has impounded the machines. The county Board of Elections disclosed Friday that seals on 22 machines were damaged or missing. Story
11/25/2009 Poor design NY Sequoia ImageCast ballot scanners don't count undervotes. They calculate them based on the number of votes for candidates -- eliminating an important double-check on the vote count. Story Archive
11/2/2004 Provisional ballots NY At the State University of New York at Albany, some students found their names no longer on voter-registration rolls, though they had voted at the same location in the past. They were given provisional ballots. Story Archive
11/1/2006 Voter intimidation NY Westchester County. Republican lawyers filed challenges to nearly 6,000 registered voters the previous Friday. Republican state Sen. Nicholas Spano asked the Westchester County Board of Elections not to send police officers to any voters' homes until after Nov. 7, to ensure that they are not intimidated into not voting. It appears that one/third of the challenged voters are minorities. Story Archive
9/15/2009 Wrong ballot NY New York City. Some lever machines had the wrong ballot set up on them. Others malfunctioned, with levers beside some candidates not moving. Story Archive
10/30/2004 Animosity at polls OH In Cleveland, the police were called when members of a community group tried to deliver a letter to the Cuyahoga County Republican headquarters asking the party to withdraw challenges against voters. Punches were thrown at the front door and each side accused the other of assault, but the police could not determine who was at fault. Story Archive
11/2/2004 Animosity at polls OH In Cleveland, a Democratic official was thrown out by a screaming poll judge before another told him he could return to the church basement. Story
10/19/2004 Ballot printing OH Hamilton County. At least two absentee ballots did not include Kerry's name. Workers accidentally removed Kerry when removing Ralph Nader's name.
Story
10/20/2004 Ballot printing OH Cuyahoga County. Arrows on absentee ballots don't line up with the correct punch hole. "If absentee voters cast their vote by trying to line up the arrow with the punch card, they could punch the wrong number."
Story
11/8/2005 Ballot printing OH Lucas County. Hundreds of absentee ballots were late, and several hundred were riddled with errors from the printer. Story Archive
11/8/2005 Ballot printing OH ESS Sandusky County. M100 optical scanners used by the Sandusky County Board of Elections refused to accept hundreds of ballots because of a printing error. Story Archive
11/8/2005 Ballot printing OH Diebold Scioto County. Absentee ballots were too wide for the Diebold optical scanner and had to be trimmed with scissors.The ballots were printed by Dayton Legal Blank, Inc, which supplies ballots and services 85 of Ohio's 88 counties. The problem was not detected until live ballots were scanned. Officials describe the machines as "not tested sufficiently." Apparently no absentee ballots were tested. Story Archive
10/20/2006 Ballot printing OH ESS Summit County. A printer certified by ES&S sent 22,000 misprinted ballots to the county. Already late, the delay will make absentee voters wait even longer for their ballots. "When the ballots arrived at the Summit County Board of Elections on Thursday, staff members discovered the second page was fraught with typographical errors." No QA at the printer, it appears. Story Archive

10/21/06 - Ballot are supposed to arrive today. The same typographical errors were found on the poll-site ballots, so they will be reprinted, too. A "computer problem" cause the printing error. Story Archive

10/27/2006 Ballot printing OH Miami County. Issue 5 was incorrectly referred to as a constitutional amendment, instead of a law, on the ballots. Story
2/14/2008 Ballot printing OH Diebold Lucas County. The Lucas County Board of Elections has discovered an error in its ballot that could lead Democratic voters to vote for both presidential candidates. The error is that Democratic voters might be asked to vote for delegates and alternates for their choice of presidential candidate both in the congressional district and statewide. Story Archive
3/4/2008 Ballot printing OH Cuyahoga County. Ballots were printed with a stub that says "Do not remove." Poll workers are telling voters that they should remove the stub. County officials say the ballots will count either way. Story Archive
11/4/2008 Ballot printing OH Belmont County. The County Board of Elections officials are asking some voters to head back to the after a St. Clairsville renewal levy was left off some paper ballots. Story Archive
Records: 761-800 of 1280
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